Wednesday, February 11, 2015

"The implications of the present research are important for human dietary recommendations. Humans seldom eat a uniform diet throughout the day, thus requiring the ability to respond to alterations in diet quality. Currently, a typical human diet consists of a high carbohydrate morning meal followed by higher fat and/or more calorie-dense meals later in the day. Our studies provide evidence that the capacity to adjust to the dietary composition of a given meal or bout of feeding is an important component in energy balance and that such capacity appears to depend on the meal ingested upon waking. Consumption of a high fat waking meal is associated with increased ability to respond appropriately to carbohydrate meals ingested later in the waking period, while a high carbohydrate morning meal appears to “fix” metabolism toward carbohydrate utilization and impair the ability to adjust metabolism toward fat utilization later in the waking period. In addition, consumption of a calorically-dense high fat meal at the end of the active period promotes cardiometabolic syndrome development in mice. The findings of this study suggest that dietary recommendations for weight reduction and/or maintenance should include information about the timing of dietary intake, as well as the quality and quantity of intake."

So no carbs for breakfast, and avoid high-fat dinners if you're eating late.

What I'd like to see is if skipping breakfast and then eating lunch avoids the end-of-day-meal effect they found here. It sounds like it, to me.

Not surprisingly, the Modern American Diet approach is the worst one, and does best at fattening you up. At least in mice, anyway.